No, we still do not want a tuk-tuk! No! Noooo!

As you might have guessed, we still don’t look like Thai citizens enough to be ignored by the hordes of people selling postcards, umbrellas, baskets, T-shirts, paintings, tuk-tuk rides, jewellery, gems, suits, etc. It really is getting quite frustrating, though we have worked out that so long as we walk in the opposite direction to the traffic, we can eliminate (almost) the tuk-tuk touts.

Thailand, by the way, is not built for the tall. This can be quite handy in that I can walk through a crowd and see what is happening all around me, but is bad in that I cannot stand upright in a bus or train without pressing my head into the roof. This is especially a problem on trains where they have the handstraps hanging from the roof, or on non-air conditioned buses where they place circular fans on the ceiling.

Even the room we are staying in has had to be Trav-proofed with a towel on the bathroom door. Why? Just to remind me not to smack my head into it, since it is so short. It is odd that the main door to the room has a regular sized door, but the bathroom door inside the room is much shorter and after I banged my head on it, Di suggested hanging a towel from it to remind me it is lower. That worked well enough, but I forgot when I went to the bathroom downstairs near the restaurant and that one was made of marble. That one really hurt and left me with a nice bump on my head…

I neglected to mention Thai food in the last couple of reports from Bangkok, so for those that wanted to know how I was coping with the food, the answer is “not too badly”. Actually, in an interesting twist, it turns out that I have a far higher tolerance to spicy food than Di now, and so while she is unable to eat a medium strength curry, it does not bother me so much, and I can easily eat it.

Mind you, the other day I did eat a meal that was beyond my abilities which was really my fault. You see, I was buying it from a food stall at a market and I was asking the vendor what the meat was.

Vendor: Chicken
Me: Okay. Is it spicy or not spicy?
Vendor: Medium spicy.
Me: And that one over there?
Vendor: Chicken too. Not spicy.
Me: Hmm.. Got any pork?
Vendor: Yes, but spicy. You no like.

At this point, I got a little uppity. Nobody tells me what I want or don’t want when it comes to food, dangnabbit. I decided that I wanted to prove her wrong.

Me: Spicy or very spicy?
Vendor: Very spicy.
Me: Very spicy for you? Or very spicy for me?
Vendor: Very spicy for me.
Me: Right. Give me that one then.

She was rather surprised but served it up to me, and I thanked her and left. I ate it. It was EXTREMELY spicy! My lips were burning and I was no longer able to feel my throat as the food slipped down my gullet. I only managed to get through half of it before I had to give up and then down just under a litre of water. Felt that meal burning my lips for the remainder of the day, but it was worth it. Tasted really good, just burned like hell!

When eating today, Di and I were chuckling about how we liked to cook “Thai” food at home, and realising that what we were eating was so Australianised that any self respecting Thai person would not even recognise it. Somewhere in between is a happy medium, and the curry we ate for lunch today was still too hot for Di to handle, so we’ll have to work her up to that since I thought it was pretty good.

There’s one for the books - Trav, the king of “steak and three veg” when he left Waaia turns into someone who craves a curry hot enough that Di cannot eat it…

It seems a little weird that we will be home soon, and quite interesting to see that when we planned the ticket months ago, we debated whether to go to Indonesia or Singapore. Given the recent threats made against Westerners in Indonesia following the air strikes in the last two days, we are very glad we chose Singapore!

We will be returning to the country without jobs or a home, so that will be a pretty important priority to take care of in the short term obviously. Rather sad to be returning to the real world, since no matter how much a tuk-tuk driver might be annoying, if the worst we can complain about is that, life is pretty good.

See all the folks back home soon…

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001